Bade Ghulam Ali Khan’s birth anniversary a low-key affair

The enclosure of his grave was recently refurbished by the GHMC

It was a low-key observance of the birth anniversary of legendary singer Bade Ghulam Ali Khan at his grave inside the Mir Momin ka Daira on Friday. The grave enclosure has been recently refurbished by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) by stripping away the iron grill with pre-fab fibre-glass reinforced concrete (FRC) grill with geometrical pattern on three sides. The simple grave is now topped with FRC bulbs with brass finials. Another addition is a band of brass on the upper portion of the tomb. “It is a good thing that the GHMC has thought about preserving this grave which is visited by a number of people who love music and the heritage of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan saab,” said Samina Raza Ali Khan, scion of Paigah family and married to the grandson of Ghulam Ali Khan. “But the family should have been consulted. They added a genealogy table to the grave that was not necessary. They had to hurriedly remove it after we objected,” she added. Bade Ghulam Ali Khan who sang the ‘Prem Jogan Ban Ja’ in Mughal-e-Azam among many other classical gems spent a lot of time in Hyderabad and passed away in the city at the Basheerbagh Palace in 1968. “It is time Hyderabad starts treating heritage in a sensitive way without resorting to heavy-handed measures. We should conserve and preserve heritage, not renovate and remodel it,” said Anuradha Reddy of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage.